Overview
- Tesla began public engineering tests of its first production Cybercab on Austin roads on Tuesday, releasing a video that shows the two-seat vehicle operating with no steering wheel or pedals and a safety monitor riding in the front passenger seat.
- Company documentation for first responders confirms production Cybercabs are normally delivered without a steering wheel, brake pedal, or acceleration pedal and classifies the vehicle as an SAE Level 4 system able to perform the driving task within a defined area.
- An EPA certificate filed in late June lists the Cybercab’s specifications as a roughly 48 kWh battery, a single 163 kW front motor, a 3,113 lb curb weight, and an advertised combined range figure reported in filings.
- Texas’s Department of Public Safety added Tesla’s Cybercab to its Connected Autonomous Vehicles first-responder plans and federal regulators have proposed dropping the brake-pedal requirement for vehicles designed only for automated driving, moves that together lower some regulatory barriers to wheel-less robotaxis.
- Tesla positions the Cybercab as a low-cost, high-volume robotaxi to replace Model Y-based rides, but company warnings about a slow early ramp and the remaining need for software validation and regulatory approval mean unsupervised, large-scale commercial service is not yet secured.